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I begin with the nurture of images, and soon I am breathing out the language of Poetry.

Trapped within the four corners of a viewfinder, I envision my verse. There I am, caged, muted in the silence of the wilderness. There is no sound. Everything is unsympathetic.

Like a camera, my eyes sweep in every direction; see everything, now in black and white, now colored in actions and variations. They are my windows on reality. They quest and seek for the truth. They know no pretense.

I write what my eyes witness, but like a photographer, I choose my own angle. I yearn for pain, for only then can I write my poetry. I write to escape my pain.

Writing is more than a mere passion. It is an addiction, a special kind of madness. Pain glides through my flesh; it is a drug, a narcotic. It is transcendental. It moves freely, in the dark lurking in my deepest slumber.

Poetry is intoxicating. I ramble around the quadrangle of a blank sheet, cram the page with words, with fragments and stanzas, just the way I frame my subjects with my viewfinder. I offer every part of myself in my poetry, as self-sacrifice. I submit myself to the higher God. I am not afraid to die for words. I am a martyr, a minion of Art, who will do what she can and try to describe what she cannot, in any way possible.

When I write, I withdraw from humanity. To write is to examine more of yourself. I confine myself in the corner, squat on the floor, lie down and hitch one leg on a table. When writing becomes unbearable, I cry for a while, and then write again. I envy the mystery of darkness. That is why, most of the time, I write in the throbbing silence of the night, until the break of dawn when the sky turns apricot as if dabbed like a painting.

A photographer takes a picture of anything that is pleasing to the lens. With a similar motive, I write death and bliss, knives and smiles. Writing is traveling with words; there is movement on every corner of the page, just as in photography, in which there is a story in every picture.

In writing, there is no such thing as a failure, because the only failure in writing is when you get tired of it and stop doing it. It is a photographic journey where you stumble when criticized and humbly rise from the wrongs to face the truth.

A poet is a photographer. She has a gallery of images inside her mind. She has a powerful, honed sense of sight, for she sees the uniqueness in every mundane thing. She is a lone traveler trapped inside a viewfinder, raring to exhibit each of the crafted portraits of herself to the keen eyes of her audience, as every picture has its own story to tell.